


Constellation of Hearts

by twelvedimensional



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: (aka i'll fight gary mitchell i don't give a damn), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, everybody loves jim (tm), no seriously everyone is pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-07-29 11:03:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7681972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twelvedimensional/pseuds/twelvedimensional
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People say that humans tend to only have one or two soulmates, but that just means they've never run into Jim Kirk.</p><p>After all, Jim loves everyone. As a result, (almost) everyone ends up loving Jim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Gary doesn’t even put down his PADD when he hears the doors to the room open. “Hey, Jim,” he says, still scrolling lazily through the page of notes he’s pretending to study.

His roommate mumbles something back, sounding so disheartened that he finally looks over his PADD. “What’s got you so-- whoa.”

Because Jim is just standing there, arms folded, with his uniform top covered in what seems to be the glop from the cafeteria. “It’s not funny!” says Jim the moment Gary starts to laugh.

Gary tries to assemble his facial features into a more somber expression. “Right. Yeah. Finnegan again?”

Jim grumbles and stalks away from Gary’s side of the room. “That’s the fifth time this week,” he says, rifling through a drawer for a spare uniform. “If a professor sees me like this again, I’m going to be charged with disrespecting the uniform, I swear!”

Gary snorts. “It’s not like we’re actually part of the ‘Fleet _yet_ ,” he makes the mistake of saying, and decides to close his mouth when Jim turns around and fixes him with a glare, a clean uniform coming dangerously close to being wrinkled, judging by the way he’s clenching it.

He knows how intense Jim is about Starfleet, space exploration, and all that, and as much as he likes Jim, he can’t help but think he takes it too seriously sometimes. “Sorry,” he adds, trying not to quail under the glare.

Jim harrumphs and starts to tug his stained shirt over his head. Gary has to hold his PADD directly in front of his face so as to pretend to not notice (they’ve been roommates for a _year_ now, and Jim still hasn’t gotten over his habit of walking around shirtless-- it’ll be a nightmare for his crew if he makes captain, Gary thinks), but before he does so, he _does_ notice.

Notice a couple of words inscribed between Jim’s shoulder blades.

Gary whistles, trying to remember the last time he and Jim got drunk enough to warrant making iffy decisions. “When’d you get a tattoo?” he asks when Jim turns around.

“A tattoo?”

Jim looks so _confused_ and so convinced that whatever’s written on him isn’t a tattoo that Gary realizes what this means.

His heart sinks a little.

“Jim, I’d betcha anything that’s a soulmark,” he says as flippantly as possible.

Jim’s expression goes from confused to ecstatic, and he proceeds to try and crane his neck around to see it. He fails miserably, looking for all the world like a contortionist flunking his final exam. “Garywhatsitsay?” Jim jumbles out, still seeming like he’s close to accidentally snapping his own neck.

Gary supposes he should be sorta happy Jim’s even _letting_ him see his soulmark-- most people cover it up-- so he leans forward, squints his eyes at the writing, and after a moment of deliberation, reads out, “‘About time you got here’.”

Jim spins around and grabs Gary by the shoulders. “You know what this means, right?” he says.

“Yeah, Jim, it means you’ll be late for something. _I_ could’ve told you that.”

“It means I’ll finally meet my soulmate!”

“Great,” says Gary feebly. “That’s great.”

Jim begins buttoning up his shirt. “I can’t believe it’s taken this long for me to get a soulmark,” he says.

“You’ve never had one before?” Gary is still forcing a smile, but he surreptitiously drags his sock up over his own soulmarked ankle using his other foot.

Jim shakes his head and smooths out a crease in his sleeves. “Nope! ‘Guess I still have a year to go before I actually _meet_ my soulmate, of course.”

“Jim, you’d better leave,” Gary blurts out.

“What?”

They stare at each other. Jim’s ecstatic grin fades.

“You have the thing-- the one you were going to go to--” Gary fumbles, waving his hands around restlessly as though to prove his nonexistent point. _Smooth-talking Gary Mitchell_ , whispers something in his brain, and a flash of insight suddenly sparks. “You were gonna go ask Professor Gill something! Don’t. . . keep him waiting,” he finishes inelegantly.

Jim gives him a strange look. “I’m not about to ask you how you know that,” he says, “but you’re right. I’ll see you later, Gary.”

Jim leaves the room at last. Gary seizes the opportunity to sit back down on the couch and try not to think of the words on his ankle that read, " _Gary, right? You're my roommate!"_ .

 

The next few days pass by without Jim mentioning his soulmark, but then it’s Sunday night, they’re sitting on the floor surrounded by PADDs and notes and hypos full of stimulants that Gary will never _ever_ tell Jim he got from a friend in the medical track, and they’re both nodding off.

Jim yawns. Twice. “A’r’ght, Gary, w’tre the frstw’nny Gn’ldres?”

“The what?”

“First twenty General Orders,” Jim repeats, bleary-eyed.

Gary rubs at his forehead. “I coulda sworn I memorized them ten minutes ago.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sakes--” snaps Jim, and he spiels off into a list of the first _thirty_ General Orders and Regulations. After a couple of minutes, he says, “Gary!”

Gary starts awake; he hadn’t even realized he’d drifted off around General Order 15 ( _“No officer of command or flag rank shall travel into a potentially hazardous area without suitable armed escort”_ \-- ha! He can’t see Jim following that one). “The first one’s the Prime Directive,” he says quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid an annoyed glare.

“ _Everyone_ knows the first one,” says Jim. “Are you even trying?”

“You don’t have to stay up and help me study,” retorts Gary. “What happened to ‘It’s your own fault if you go to parties instead of studying, Gary’?! You sound like my parents!”

“I can’t let a friend fail all his classes, can I?” That stings a little bit; Gary’s good at most of his other classes, and it’s not his fault that he doesn’t have the patience to memorize and cite the history behind every single Starfleet regulation. But at the same time, Jim’s concern is a little. . . endearing.

 _Mitchell, you’re in deep_ , he tells himself.

“Thanks,” he tells Jim, wondering if that’s the appropriate response.

Jim gives him a look, sighs, and sets his PADD onto his lap. “Maybe you’re right. We’ll take a break.”

Mentally praising every deity he’s ever heard of, Gary grins at Jim. “Best idea I’ve heard all day, Lieutenant.”

“I’m not a--”

Gary snorts. “You sure act like one.”

Then there is a comfortable, slightly dull silence. Gary searches for something to talk about and hits upon the most recent upheaval in Jim’s (and also his, maybe) life. “You believe in soulmates, Jim?”

Jim smiles and glances away from Gary in the harsh light thrown off by his PADD. “Of course.”

“You know soulmates don’t always end up as the people you actually love right?” Gary attempts to keep his conversational tone level, but can’t help the high pitch the sentence ends on.

“I know,” says Jim. “But I mean, I gotta give them a chance.”

Gary pauses. “Sure,” he says, finally. “But just saying, the people you date don’t have to be your soulmates.”

“I _know_ ,” repeats Jim empathetically. “What do you think I’ve been doing for the past few years?”

Gary stifles the urge to bang his head against the nearest wall.

* * *

 

Only when he’s grabbing lunch with a friend who _won’t stop complaining_ about his new soulmark does Gary get an idea of what to do about Jim. “Say, Omar,” he says, cutting the other man off around a mouthful of the most pitiful-looking burger he’s ever seen in his life, “what’s got you so riled up about soulmarks, anyway?”

Omar Holloway blinks at him, nonplussed. “I don’t believe in soulmates.”

“Why not?”

Omar blinks again, suddenly quiet for a man who studies languages.

Gary stares at him until he shifts uncomfortably and answers at last.

“I haven’t exactly. . . had a good experience with soulmates,” mutters Omar. “I mean, I’d rather be with a person I choose myself than someone ‘the universe’ picks out for me.”

Gary keeps staring at him until he realizes that he’s probably unnerving the other guy. “Huh,” he says. “So the last person who was your soulmate must’ve broken your heart.”

This clearly strikes a nerve with Omar, who spears a piece of lettuce with his fork a little too viciously. “Jesus, Mitchell, you never did learn tact, did you?”

“Nah.” Gary leans back in his chair, feeling lighter all of a sudden. “You think you have more of a chance with people you pick yourself?”

“Hell, as long as they _aren’t_ my soulmate, I’ll be fine.”

“Great.”

‘Great’ is obviously not the appropriate response to an acquaintance revealing more information about his soulmates than most would to their best friends, Gary realizes belatedly when Omar stands up, dumps his half-full plate into the trash, and excuses himself because he’s ‘late for Linguistics’.

But Gary doesn’t mind Omar’s deserted him, because it gives him time to think. With the sound of Jim (who’s just walked into the room and seen Omar throw away the plate of salad) yelling in the background, he decides that the best way to dissuade Jim from being with his soulmate is to thoroughly disabuse him of the notion that soulmates are _real_.

 

That’s how Gary ends up talking to a blonde lab technician with a laser-focused brain when it comes to molecular biology a year later.

“The thing is, when you splice the DNA--” Carol’s still stirring her coffee, not having realized it’s long gone cold. Gary’s endured enough of her rambles to decide that now’s a good time to interrupt and try to ask the question he’s been building up to since he first met Carol.

“That’s interesting, Carol-- say, have you ever met Jim in person?”

Carol stops stirring and gives Gary the sort of look Jim gives him after he begs for help with some last-minute studying of ‘Fleet protocol. This spurs him on; if Carol really is this much like Jim, they’ll get along well without to much prodding.

And if he knows anything about relationships between people who are too alike, they’ll also fall apart right when he needs them to.

“Kirk? No,” says Carol, “but he’s your roommate, isn’t he? You talk about him a lot, you know.”

Gary waves his hand impatiently. “But have you ever exchanged _words_? Bumped into each other and said ‘sorry’, things like that?”

“Definitely not.” At Gary’s _are you sure?_ , she nods. “He’s training for Command, I’m only working _with_ Sciences. Granted, I’ve heard he’s enthusiastic about every track, ‘stack of books with legs’ and all, but--”

“--But he’s not too interested in molecular biology; I get it,” finishes Gary. “He _wants_ to look into sciences, though,” he adds slyly. “It’s why I was asking; do you know anyone who can introduce him to it?”

Carol frowns at Gary. “There _is_ a presentation I’m helping with on Friday. . .” She continues on, giving Gary the date, time, location, and subject of the presentation. He doesn’t care about the presentation, just notes that Carol’s excited about it because she came up with part of the experiment.

“Gary, you’re acting strange,” Carol says when he slips the paper with all the information into his pocket.

“No, I’m not,” he replies automatically, and gives her a grin just to throw her off. “One last thing, Carol-- you won’t mind if Jim shows up late to your presentation, will you?”

She narrows her eyes at him. “I’ll _absolutely_ mind.”

“It’s just that Jim’s always late to things--” that’s a lie, a total lie; Jim hates being late if he can help it-- “but it’s not his fault, things just pop up a lot. So if he shows up late, let him be, alright? Sure, it’s fine if you say something like ‘ _about time you got here_ ’. . .” Gary pauses, trying to tell whether the words have sunk in.

Carol’s expression is still frozen between a cold don’t-tell-me-what-to-do-with-my-life glare and the precursor to an incredulous laugh. She goes for the laugh. “Sure, Gary,” she says. “I’ll be sure to say _exactly_ what you tell me to, ‘cause you’re the sensible one out of the two of us.”

“Exactly,” says Gary, and he ducks the swat to his head Carol attempts with her spoon.

 

“Hold on a moment, Jim,” Gary says cheerily on Friday evening just as Jim walks through the door, sweaty and clearly exhausted from the hand-to-hand combat class he’d just had. “Don’t flop yourself onto the bed just yet; you’ve got a presentation to attend!”

Jim squints at him, breathing heavily. “I’ve gotta what?”

“Freshen up, I promised a friend that you’d attend a molecular bio presentation. She’s one of the contributors to the study they’re explaining tonight-- something about reconfiguring dermal regenerators to create the tissue of an alien even without its DNA in the database?”

An interested gleam sparks in Jim’s eyes. “Where’s it at?”

Gary leans over the side of the couch and digs through his pile of laundry, coming up triumphantly with a slip of paper he hands to Jim. Jim scans over it and starts. “Gary, it started two minutes ago!”

Gary smirks. “Better hurry, then, huh? Only,” he adds when Jim turns again to dash out the door, “you might want to fix yourself up a little.”

“I can’t go, Gary! Professor Chandra hates it when people are late!”

“Look, don’t worry. Just give the presenters your most charming smile and say--” Gary hesitates, searching for the right thing to say to Carol when it happens again, a little flash in his brain, “-- say ‘I’m sorry, did I interrupt you?’”

* * *

 

Carol Marcus is having the time of her life.

Alright, she’s standing in front of an audience of about 40 cadets, only twelve of which look genuinely interested in what she’s saying, but she doesn’t let it weigh on her mind. It’s their loss if they don’t recognize how groundbreaking this is!

“Miss Marcus? Miss Marcus!” Carol blinks. Professor Chandra is looking at her, one eyebrow arched, when she realizes that the presentation’s been on her slide for a minute now and she hasn’t spoken yet.

“Oh! Er, our initial procedure for testing the hypothesis was to first--”

The doors to the lecture hall creak open on her left. Everyone, including her, turns to stare at the newcomer, who’s framed in the doorway and frozen by the stares of 40 others. Then his startled look melts away (melts? Yes, melts-- whoever that is, that’s how his facial expressions change) into a sheepish one. “I’m sorry, did I interrupt you?”

The words don’t really register for Carol for a second, but when they do, her breath catches in her throat. Her hand darts up to the soulmark on the back of her neck for a second, always hidden by a curtain of long blonde hair.

The cadet watches her, an apologetic grin on his face.

 _Don’t be silly, Carol, no one could have_ seen _your soulmark. At least, not long enough to be able to read it._

Carol’s sure her face is stuck in the same expression it was when the doors had opened, but for some reason she can’t think of what other expression is appropriate for the situation. In contrast, the newcomer’s face shifts easily, now from apologetic to mild concern. “I’m not too late, am I?”

“Uh. . .”

Carol’s brain seizes upon the only thing she can remember to say coherently, no thanks to Mr. Mitchell.

“About time you got here.”

Something flickers in the cadet’s eyes-- recognition or a trick of the light? Whatever it is, he banishes it with a blink, chuckles, and finds a seat.

This must be Jim Kirk, decides Carol as she clears her throat and continues her presentation. This must be a coincidence, because there’s no way a man whom Gary Mitchell holds in such high regard could be her soulmate.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carol eats pasta, flirts with Jim, and makes scientific breakthroughs. Not necessarily in that order.
> 
> Also, Jim gets assigned to a cadet training vessel, and all goes well until they begin heading back to Earth. Cue a chance meeting with the universe's grouchiest doctor.

Kirk comes up to Carol after the presentation is over and she and the others are packing up their things. “I have a quick question-- er, are you in a hurry?”

Carol would say “yes” because in her experience, people who are under the impression that they’ve met their soulmate tend to make overt romantic advances without even getting to know the person, and she really doesn’t have the time for that, but unfortunately that isn’t the polite thing to say. “No, not at all. What did you want to ask?”

Kirk shifts his weight from foot to foot awkwardly. “Your presentation was incredible, but I’m not as up on molecular biology as I should be. Could you explain what you meant when you said. . .” He trails off and flips open the notebook that had been tucked under his arm.

Carol raises an eyebrow. This is the only person who’d bothered to take notes.

 

“Are you in Starfleet?” asks Kirk after Carol finishes her explanation. (Carol notices he’d taken more notes as she’d spoken, all the while nodding and muttering to himself. _He has hazel eyes_ , says a voice in her head, and she tells it to shut up.)

“Starfleet? Oh, god, no.” Kirk raises his eyebrows. “Nothing against ‘exploring strange new worlds’, but the only thing we’re working on the regenerator here at the Academy is because it always has cutting-edge equipment.”

Kirk breaks into a fit of giggles. “You must not’ve seen the old SEMs in B220,” he chokes out.

Carol feels her eyes bug out. “Scanning electron microscopes?!”

Kirk nods. A snicker bubbles up through Carol’s chest, and soon they’re both laughing helplessly over ancient scientific equipment.

“God, I need to tell Cass, she’ll get a laugh out of that,” she says as soon as she’s able to breathe properly again.

“Cass?”

“Oh, Cassandra; she’s on the team. She’s helping design this thing. My best friend; I love her, but she’s absolutely a _snob_ about how outdated the technology we use is.”

“You’re already building this?”

Carol hesitates. She wasn’t technically supposed to tell anyone, but somehow it’d slipped out. “Yes. . . It’s already patented, and we’d been greenlighted months ago. . .”

Something else seems to occur to Kirk. “Wait, Cassandra-- _Cassandra Njenga’s_ on your team?!”

Carol grins-- it’s always fun to watch people when the realization dawns on them that they could potentially meet the woman who helped design the latest renovation of Spacedock. (She’s also working on an updated layout for Constitution-class starships, but Carol’ll keep _that_ secret, at least.) “Yes, and no, I can’t introduce you to her.”

Carol bumps into Kirk several times over the course of the next week. Alright, maybe she goes slightly out of her way to walk past the buildings where the cadet in the command track swarm, but if Jim notices her obviousness, he doesn’t comment on it. Eventually, they make a habit out of it: meeting up at the corner of the Command block, grabbing coffee from the cafeteria (if this is what _Academy_ coffee is like, Carol doesn’t want to know how replicated _starship_ coffee is), and searching for a seat somewhere together.

Most of the time, once Kirk (no, _Jim_ , he’s _Jim_ ) settles down with his coffee and sets down his pile of textbooks, he won’t budge from that spot or say a word until he’s done with whatever notetaking he needs to do. Carol doesn’t mind; it gives her time to do her _own_ studying-- researching frantically on a PADD because an inkling of an idea has sprouted in her head, and if what she thinks is possible really is, she could make the biggest breakthrough in the history of _ever_.

One day, Jim looks up from his book ( _Starfleet Command Protocol, 17th Edition_ ). “I’ve just realized, we’ve spent two weeks in each other’s company like this and we’ve barely even spoken.”

Carol laughs. “I’m not feeling insulted, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Jim gives her a grin. The man smiles a lot-- sometimes, while reading, he lets out a little huff of laughter even when the subject matter looks as dull as a brick. Then he frowns again. “I was wondering. . . if you wanted to go to a restaurant tonight?”

“I--”

“Of course, if you’re busy--”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been living on Academy coffee for the past few weeks! I’d love to.”

Jim grins again, and this time, the smile seems to light up his entire face. _Shut up_ , Carol tells her brain again. But she smiles back.

* * *

 

Three weeks after the dinner date (was it a _date_ date? Carol spends an embarrassing amount of time pondering that), she and the rest of her team finally finish putting together the dermal regenerator.

After deleting all the data it has on alien skin structures, they run it over a papercut on Laura Chen’s thumb. The regenerator takes a good five minutes to compute, but when it finally figure out how Laura’s skin is structured, her thumb is good as new.

Vijay Gupta whoops from the back of the room, where he’s trying to take off his gloves-- the ring and pinky fingers of the right-hand glove had melted together when he was welding together the casing of the regenerator. “Does it work?” he calls over.

Barbara Jung runs a tricorder over Laura’s hand. She lets out an astonished laugh. “Yeah! Pretty much seamless!”

Laura lifts up her hand and flexes her thumb. “It didn’t heal weird either,” she whispers reverently. “Guys, we did it.”

Carol high-fives Cassandra, then walks over to Vijay. Behind her, she hears Laura’s comm unit beep, and Laura say, “Ah, it’s my wife, gotta take this.”

Vijay is still struggling with the right-hand glove. “Need help with that?” Carol asks, raising her eyebrows.

“I’m considering leaving it like this, honestly.” Carol’s eyebrows brush her hairline, and Vijay adds, “It means I can finally do the Vulcan salute!”

He lifts up his hand, ring and middle fingers parted perfectly.

“Moron,” says Cassandra, who’s appeared at Carol’s shoulder and is rolling her eyes. “Give me your hand, I’ll get it off.”

“No, wait!” cries Vijay, a gleam entering his eyes.

“You were complaining about that glove for two hours!”

“And now I’m attached to it!”

“Yes, literally! It’s stuck on your hand!”

“No, shh--!” Vijay lifts up a finger. “Run the dermal regenerator over the glove!”

“Why would you--? Oh. _Oh_.” Something dawns on Cassandra, a mischievous plan writ large on her face.

“Please tell me you’re not going to use the thing we spent half a year constructing and two years planning on a plastic _glove_ ,” says Carol, covering her mouth to stifle her laughter.

“You never know what an alien’s skin could be made out of!” tosses Cassandra over her shoulder as she marches off to grab the regenerator. She returns several moments later with Barbara, who is holding it as carefully as she would someone’s first-born child. “Don’t flinch,” she tells Vijay.

“I would never--!”

“Vij, you make a fuss when we put _rubbing alcohol_ on a cut.”

It’s Vijay’s turn to roll his eyes. The dermal regenerator whirrs away.

Laura ambles over. “Hey, Kathy’s making pasta tonight and she’s inviting all of you over so we can celebrate the-- _what the hell are you doing_?”

“Science,” says Vijay, who’s not necessarily wrong.

Carol turns to Laura. “I mean, if it’s not an intrusion, we’d love to come over.”

Laura snorts. “Kathy making pasta is a once-in-a-lifetime event; you don’t want to miss it.”

“I’m looking forward to it as soon as I can wield a fork again,” says Vijay.

The regenerator sparks, Vijay jumps, and Cassandra grabs the nearest fire extinguisher. As soon as the smoke clears, they all lean in to stare at the glove.

Vijay takes it off cautiously, then beams. “Well, that turned out better than I expected!”

Cassandra sighs and snatches the glove out of his hands, and Laura turns away snickering, telling Kathy that they’ll definitely be there.

 

At dinner, while eating the best fettuccine alfredo she’s ever had in her life, Carol finds herself unintentionally staring at Laura and Kathy’s matching soulmarks.

Before Laura, Carol had never met anyone who displayed their soulmark so openly before. There were always people out there who would pretend to be your soulmate by reading the words off your soulmark and then leave you when you stopped being useful (Carol’s father was always telling her horror stories). Laura’s soulmark was along the side of her neck-- _“I don’t have a fire extinguisher!”_ \-- and Kathy’s ran the length of her forearm-- _“What do you mean you don’t have one are you crazy what were you even baking?”_.

Kathy makes eye contact with Carol. Carol blushes. “Was I staring? Sorry--”

“Laura hasn’t told you the story yet, has she?”

“The story behind your soulmarks? Nope, not at all,” says Cassandra, leaning forward in interest.

Six-year-old Grace, who’s sitting at the head of the table and is completely at ease with the swarm of scientists who’ve infiltrated her home, giggles. She sobers up when Carol looks at her. “It’s a funny story,” says Grace in a stage whisper.

“Oh, I’d _love_ to hear a funny story,” says Carol, glancing back over to Kathy with a grin.

Kathy chuckles. “Long story short, I lived in the apartment above Laura and I was trying to bake cookies one day--”

“She burnt them,” interrupts Laura, shoveling pasta into her mouth. “Set off all the smoke alarms, so like a good samaritan I march upstairs to see if she needed help.”

Kathy puts her reddening face in her hands. “My stove was on fire,” she sputters through her laughter. “I turned away for two seconds and suddenly my chocolate-chip cookies overshot ‘golden brown’ and got ‘charcoal’!”

“I see the fire, and obviously she needs help--”

“‘Obviously’?!”

“-- _Obviously_ ! So I bang on the door and she lets me in and I ask her where the fire extinguisher is. And she says ‘I don’t have a fire extinguisher!’ and is tossing _everything_ into the fire. Water, soda, a vase of daffodils, a throw blanket--”

“Laura _flips out_ and yells--”

“‘ _What do you mean you don’t have one?!_ ’” Kathy, Laura, and Grace say in unison. They collapse back into their chairs under the strength of their giggling. It isn’t the most hilarious story in the world, but something about how at ease Laura and Kathy are with each other and how fondly they remember destroying a kitchen sends the rest of the table into laughter.

They’re so relaxed around each other, thinks Carol in astonishment, and then with a start she realizes she feels the same way around Jim.

 

Gary finds Carol in the cafeteria during his free period a few days later. “What are you doing here?” he asks amiably, swinging a leg over his chair and settling down to inspect his sandwich.

Carol doesn’t look up from her PADD. “I’m meeting Jim at lunch.”

Gary forces a grin. “Yeah, you two’ve been hanging out a lot. You able to stand the Jim Kirk charm?”

He sees a small smile on Carol’s face, though her eyes are firmly fixed on whatever she’s reading. “I don’t know how, Gary, but I think he’s my soulmate.”

Gary chokes on his sandwich.

* * *

 

Months pass.

Jim and Carol begin dating, and annoyingly enough, Jim’s constant lovey-dovey mood doesn’t affect his grades a bit. Gary, on the other hand, is getting grouchier by the day and has taken to hanging out with Omar Holloway to complain about soulmarks with him.

This is the year Gary and Jim graduate. The workload, naturally, is daunting. Five months from their final day, Jim is assigned to a cadet training ship: the USS _Valley_.

The _Valley_ takes a simple path through space: out past the Oort Cloud and back. Her captain, Madison Mallory, regales them with tales of her past adventures in space as she sets the cadets to work getting real experience in the ‘Fleet.

By the time two months have passed (Jim’s scraped his way to earning the rank of ensign when he graduates), the _Valley_ turns back to Earth. An hour into the trip back, the lights flicker.

Ben Finney, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Jim and thirty other cadets in Engineering, mutters something under his breath about how _old_ the _Valley_ is. Engineer Fernandez gives him a look. “She’s old, cadet, but perfectly up-to-date. You ever wonder why this ship’s stuck on training missions?”

Ben opens his mouth to retort something when the lights go out. Jim hears Fernandez swear under his breath. “Castellano!” he says loudly, figure silhouetted by the dim emergency lighting. “What’s going on?”

An answering shout comes from the opposite end of Engineering. Fernandez sighs and presses a button to comm Captain Mallory. “It’s your lucky day, cadets,” he says, eyeing them critically. “You get to see how we make repairs at a starbase.”

 

Making repairs at a starbase is possibly the most boring thing Jim’s ever experienced. The entire crew is released for shore leave, if you could call an ancient space station a shore, and the empty ship, according to the captain, will take two hours to be scanned just because it’s a patchwork of old and new, and two more hours to be repaired.

“Jim, you aren’t usually this cynical,” says Ben, elbowing him in the midst of his grumbles.

Jim pinches the bridge of his nose. “I just want to get off this _ship_.”

“We are off the ship,” says Ben, earning an elbow back. “Tell you what, let’s go to the rec rooms.”

“Rec _room,”_ corrects Jim. “How big is this place?”

 

According to a computer they find in the little oblong rec room, it turns out Starbase 113 is less than half the size of the average starbase. “It’s smaller than the _Valley_ _,”_ says Ben in wonderment. “And the _Valley_ ’s only--”

Jim’s already moved on. He paces the packed room (there are only 20-ish people in there and it’s already crowded). _Jim, you’re not claustrophobic_ , he tells himself firmly.

(He is. A little.) He finds an abandoned tri-D chessboard in the back of the room and tries to distract himself by attempting to beat the computer.

Ten minutes into his staring contest with a rook, a crackle from the PA startles him. _“Yellow alert. Starbase crew, yellow alert. Mallory’s crew to transporter r--”_

Captain Mallory jumps to her feet as the announcement is cut off and an ominous drone fills the silence. She slams a comm button on the wall. “Commander Wilkinson? What’s happening?” After two seconds of nothing, during which she slams the button again in frustration, she gestures for the cadets to follow the order and get to the transporter room.

The herd of cadets stumbles into a hallway. “Captain, what happened to the power?” calls out a very young-sounding voice in the dark as Mallory strides past them to take the lead.

Captain Mallory is opening her mouth to respond when bright blue light dances off the walls, a distorted whirr fills the halls, and 30 bulky, six-foot-tall humanoid figures appear in front of them.

The crew scatters.

Jim fumbles for his phaser (he never thought he’d use it while serving on the _Valley_ ) at once. _We can't fight them off, we're outnumbered!_ he thinks, and as though to prove his point, a cadet tries to surprise one of the intruders from behind, but is knocked away almost casually before being shot.

In a blur of movement and screaming and the foreboding sound of bodies hitting the ground, they retreat. Some duck into offices they pass on the way, but the intruders just keep advancing and striking them down.

Jim dodges a punch to the gut, and out of nowhere, Captain Mallory appears. She pins his attacker by the neck to the wall, a phaser trained to his chest. “I’m Captain Mallory of the Federation Starship _Valley_. Who are you and why were you sent here?” she snarls, and amidst ducking and dodging the flurry of cadets and attackers alike, Jim feels a flash of admiration.

The man smiles. He has sharp teeth and his face ripples oddly, as though it’s more pliable than that of a human. “We are the Valans,” he says before flinging the captain away.

She hits the opposite wall with a dull thud and collapses to the ground, not before the Valan pulls out his own weapon and fires at her.

“Captain!” yells Jim, and makes the mistake of glancing away from his own attacker. Blue light arcs across his vision and he falls.

* * *

 

Jim is being dragged across the floor.

He opens his eyes and sees a pair of hands holding him by the ankles and pulling him along. One of the hands has a ring on the pinky finger. This strikes him as odd.

After several more moments, Jim remembers that his normal state of being is, in fact, _not_ being pulled across the floor by his legs. His brain registers this as _wrong bad no_ , so he snaps his eyes open and tries to kick his legs away. “What-- where-- what happened?” he says, scrambling away and propping himself up on his elbows to stare blearily at the man before him.

The man shushes him. _“Shut your goddamn mouth!”_ he whisper-shouts, and then he grabs Jim’s ankles again and continues pulling him. Jim gapes.

He sees the other cadets too, being helped along and carried by personnel in medical blues he doesn’t recognize. The man dragging Jim stops in front of a door, grumbles something under his breath when it hisses open loudly, and pulls him into. . . into a sickbay.

When the man stops to catch his breath (only then does Jim get a good look at him, blue eyes and askew brown hair and all), Jim takes the opportunity to jump to his feet. Then he regrets it.

“Easy, easy,” he hears the blue-eyed man say when his vision stops jumping around. The voice is markedly gentler than the shut-your-mouth voice. “You took a bad hit.”

Jim sits down hard on the edge of a biobed. Around him, he can hear cadets whispering and groaning, the sound strangely calming, like the ocean. Out of the corner of his eye are a group of doctors and nurses blockading the doors with random chairs. “What happened?” he asks again in a softer voice.

The man ignores him in favor of tearing open Jim’s sleeve with a scalpel and frowning at the bruises on his arm. “What’s your name?”

“Jimmy,” he replies tiredly. Then he blinks. “James. Jim! My name’s Jim. Jim Kirk.”

The man’s frown deepens, and he runs a tricorder over Jim’s head. “Must’a been the equivalent of a high stun,” he mutters to himself. “I’m Doctor McCoy.”

Jim bats McCoy away. “What _happened?”_ he repeats.

McCoy gives up and folds his arms. “Alright, _Captain Cadet,_ I’ll tell you what happened. From what I’ve figured, five teams of intruders beamed aboard the starbase in different sections and are currently mowing us down. You n’ twenty-ish other cadets were tryna fight off one group right outside the Sickbay doors, and after the intruders ran off, we grabbed all the survivors we could find near us.” The corners of his mouth tug downward. “We’re currently barricading the doors because standard lockdown controls aren’t operating.”

Jim is quiet. “Oh. Why--”

One of the nurses stacking chairs in front of the doors freezes and shushes everyone loudly. All movement in Sickbay ceases. Jim can hear muffled footsteps outside in the hallway and harsh voices that clearly belong to the Valans.

One voice sounds awfully close to Sickbay’s doors. After a couple of moments, however, the footsteps move on. A barely audible sigh of relief fills the room.

McCoy is staring at the door. “‘Won’t be long before they think to find us in here, if they’ve got any brains.”

Jim resumes his question in an undertone. “Why isn’t the lockdown system operating?”

“I’m guessing the intruders have some sort of neutralization field working to knock out our systems. Some things, like lights-- and thankfully, runnin’ water-- still work; I bet they’re configured a little differently and so are immune.”

“. . . Transporters?”

“Gone; I commed someone who’s hidin’ out in the transporter room and they confirmed it. Listen, you need to lie down, whatever those weapons were, they did a number on you.”

A cry of pain comes from the corner of the room, but thankfully, no Valan comes barging in at the noise. “Where’s the captain?” whimpers the cadet cradling her arm.

All eyes turn to the nurse who was asked the question. Jim glances around; Captain Mallory is conspicuously absent. _Maybe she’s hiding in one of the nearby commodore’s offices._

But, no. The nurse is quiet for much too long. After a moment of silence, during which she runs a dermal regenerator along another cadet's arm, eyes averted, she whispers, “I’m sorry, but Captain Mallory is dead.”

A dismayed murmur fills the room. Jim stumbles to his feet (he feels McCoy’s hand grab onto the back of his shirt and try to pull him back down). “She can’t be! She was shot with the same weapon we were and-- and we’re all here!”

“Jim,” whispers Ben. There’s a giant burn mark on the side of his face, similar to the one on Jim’s chest that was left behind by the Valans’ weapons. “Jim, I saw it. Right after you went down, the one that shot you had this look on his face, like he thought something wasn’t right, that we weren’t dying. And he picked up someone’s phaser lying on the ground, set it to kill, and shot her again.”

A cold silence settles over the room, filled by the rustle of people checking to see if they still had their phasers, checking if there was a possibility that it was their phaser that killed their captain.

Jim doesn’t have to check; he knows his is missing.

“If they figured out how to kill us,” says the woman, Alanza, who’d asked about the captain, “how come they didn’t slaughter us all?”

“My guess is that they think it’d take too long to kill us straight away, it’d give us time to send out a distress signal. They probably plan on first knocking us all out, doing whatever they have to do, and then coming back to finish the job,” says McCoy dully. “I bet their weapons were _supposed_ to kill you first try, but they’re probably not effective on different physiology.”

Ben huffs. “You sure are a ray of sunshine.”

“So the others on the starbase are either unconscious or dead?” asks Alanza incredulously.

“If they’re smart and have luck on their side, they might have made it to one of the offices or something and barricaded the doors. Won’t do much against those creatures’ strength, but maybe if they lie low--”

“Shut up,” says Ben. “They’ll survive. They have to.”

McCoy looks over at him, eyebrows raised.

“We need to stop these-- these Valans,” says Jim. “Doctor McCoy, is there anything valuable on this starbase?”

McCoy snorts. “This is the hind end of Federation space; ‘course not. Anything on your ship?”

“Our ship is a--” Jim cuts off his half-formed insult to his late captain’s ship. “Our ship is just a training vessel.”

“Maybe they want hostages?” offers Ben.

“Captain Mallory would’ve been the best hostage material here, seeing as there aren’t any commodores around. But since they killed her--”

“It can’t be hostages,” says Jim, finishing McCoy’s sentence.

Alanza’s eyes widen. “They want the _Valley._ ”

“What?”

“Jim, it has to be! The doctor said it himself, this place is a dump, and there’s nothing valuable around here except--”

“Except. . . an empty Federation ship.”

There is a somber silence. McCoy finally breaks it, pursing his lips. “I have to say, they’ve got perfect timing.”

“We need to stop them somehow,” Ben says. There’s a chorus of agreement.

McCoy cuts the cadets off. “Now, wait a minute, they’ll kill you! We’re outnumbered and we’ve got half their strength!”

“We can’t just abandon the others!” says Jim, rounding on the doctor. “They’re probably injured--”

Something smashes against the Sickbay doors, and Jim realizes their conversation has gotten much too loud. A hiss escapes from them, a sad shadow of the usual sound they make when opening, but they hold firm.

Some of the cadets struggle to their feet and pull out their phasers. McCoy looks at them, looks at the dent in the doors, and then back at them. “We don’t stand a chance if they get in,” he says quietly.

“The _others_ don’t stand a chance if the Valans find them, either!” retorts Jim, but McCoy has already darted over to a panel of switches on the wall. He throws three blue ones and punches in a code, but before he can enter it, Jim has run over and grabbed him by the arm.

“You can’t activate the biohazard quarantine!”

“Well, I’d wager that still works since those are higher-level systems than regular lockdown, and it’s the best we’ve _got_ ; nothing’ll be able to get in--”

“Nothing will be able to get _out_ either!” hisses Jim, feeling a flash of panic. The walls seem to be pressing in; he rubs his eyes with his free hand.

McCoy pauses and searches Jim’s face, concerned.

Another clang sounds. A crack appears down one of the doors, and two of the chairs in the makeshift blockade topple over.

Jim continues frantically, digging his fingers into McCoy’s arm. “You said it yourself, only Sickbay is capable of quarantine, and it can’t be deactivated from inside. The others can’t even do a basic lockdown, they’ll be slaughtered, we’ll be trapped, and no one will find out for months because we’re in the _hind end of space_.”

“You’re talking a worst-case scenario--”

“I’ve _lived_ through a worst-case scenario!” shouts Jim. “I can recognize one when I see it!”

The crack widens, and they can see a ghostly face through it. McCoy takes a deep breath, looks away from Jim and hits “enter”.

" _Biohazard quarantine implemented,”_ says the computer. The Sickbay doors creak loudly, but Jim can see a force-field shimmering in front of them.

A phaser whirrs on the opposite side of the doors, and finally, they give way. Jim hears McCoy hold in a breath when a Valan pushes the pieces of durasteel aside like they weigh nothing, looks around the room triumphantly, and fires his phaser.

The force field absorbs the shock easily. McCoy lets out a breath.

The Valan’s jaw works for a couple of seconds. “You think you’ve escaped,” he says, tilting his head. His voice is weirdly gentle, juxtaposed with his imposing figure. “You think that once we leave, once the neutralization field that’s affected your systems leaves with us, you can send a message to your government, they can stop us, they can rescue you from quarantine.”

No one moves. The Valan unclips a little box from his belt, paper-white skin still undulating, and sets it on the ground. “They will never know,” he says, mouth stretched in a soft smile. “Oh, I heard your arguments, and you’re right. You will starve here alone-- so much neater than being shot, isn’t it?”

He turns around, steps over the pieces of the ruined door, and vanishes from sight. The little lights on the innocent-looking box blink on and off, on and off, on and--

Jim sits down on the floor, face blank. “He could be bluffing, that box might not be what’s destroyed our systems,” says Doctor McCoy uncertainly from above him. “And we have equipment that could sustain us for a while.”

Jim feels a surge of animosity towards the doctor. “Yes, doctor, that’s _very_ helpful,” he snaps. McCoy stiffens.

“Listen, that box is right at the edge of the force field,” says Ben. “Can you. . . somehow reach it?”

McCoy sighs and puts his face in his hands. “That force field doesn’t do anything by halves. I set the parameters to keep phasers from cutting through, to keep in any living thing within a certain radius--” He pauses. “Wait a second.”

Jim looks up at him. “What?”

McCoy snaps his fingers and snatches up a medikit that’s been lying on a nearby biobed. “Anyone open this one yet?”

There is a psychedelic sea of shaking heads.

“If all medikits have a sterile field inside them before they’re opened, which they _do_. . . that means there’s no bacteria on any of the tools inside, no livin’ things on them, so they could go through the force field!”

“Yeah, remind me, how does that help us?” asks Ben.

Jim gets to his feet unsteadily. “We’re close enough to the box that we could reach it if we could go through the force field. . .”

“Exactly!” says McCoy. “But we’d have to work fast, because the field’d stop your hand at any part bacteria’s been transferred onto.”

Jim stares at McCoy. “You should really fix that loophole in the force field.”

McCoy beams. “Not right now, because it’s about to save our asses!”

 

Five minutes later, after a lot of cursing at the force field, many discarded scalpels that had been held in “bacteria-covered” (“That’s harsh, McCoy.” “Well, it’s a fact.”) hands for too long and rejected by the field, Jim finally manages to scrape the box close enough that he’s almost nose-to-nose with it and can see it better through the rippling field.

“Any idea how to stop it working?” asks McCoy, who’s crouching next to where Jim is lying uncomfortably on the floor. The ring of cadets and nurses around them lean in to peer at the box.

Jim opens his mouth, then closes it. “. . . No.” He cranes his neck to look at his fellow cadets. “Anyone here in Linguistics?”

“Yep,” says Shahna. “And nope, I can’t read what that box says.”

Jim sighs. “Wonderful.”

McCoy continues staring at the box, brow furrowed. “Hang on a sec, Jim, let me try something.”

Jim lets go of the scalpels, rolls out of the way, and get to his feet. The scalpels stay suspended in the air where he left them, the force field not allowing the “contaminated” handles budge one bit. McCoy sits down, contemplates the box for a moment, then twists the scalpels into the box. Sparks fly, the speakers on the wall let out a loud screech of feedback, and then. . . nothing.

The lights come back on.

“Whoa,” says Ben.

Jim blinks. “How did you guess that would work?”

McCoy shrugs, grinning. “Last-ditch attempt.” He flips open his communicator. “Transporter room, this is McCoy. Are the transporters working again?”

There’s an affirmative from the other end. McCoy listens, face grim again, for several more seconds before flipping the communicator shut. “They’re going to start beaming a security team aboard the _Valley_.”

“The Valans?”

“Gone. I bet they’ve already aboard the _Valley_ and are just tryna figure out how the systems work.” McCoy glances at Jim and gives him a reassuring smile. “No other fatalities so far.”

“So, who’s coming to deactivate the quarantine?” asks Alanza.

 

Lieutenant-Commander Winfield walks in, takes one look at the scene, and simply raises his eyebrows. “You get all those scalpels out because you needed to do some emergency surgery or because you were starting to get sick of each other and decided to plan a homicide?”

One of the cadets winces. McCoy folds his arms, scowling. “Is it really the best time to joke about murder in front of cadets who just saw their captain die, _sir?”_

Winfield starts and shakes his head quickly under McCoy’s glare. “Right-- yeah-- I’ll go deactivate that force field now.”

 

When the force field shuts off and the scalpels stuck in it clatter to the ground, there is a collective sigh of relief. “Oh, thank god,” says Ben, leaning on the model of a human skeleton next to him (“Get off that!” barks McCoy). “I was beginning to feel claustrophobic.” Jim gives him a tight smile.

Winfield turns to face the small group. “Well, you’ll be glad to know all the rogue Valans have been rounded up and removed from your ship, cadets.”

“That’s great, really going to fix everything,” McCoy says under his breath. Winfield gives him a look, turns back to stride out the door, and proceeds to crumple to the floor with a crackle of blue electricity.

A Valan moves into view, framed by the door.

Alanza is first to pull out her phaser and fire. The Valan stumbles for a moment. In pain. Undaunted. “That was for Captain Mallory, you b--!” Alanza screams before ducking. The wall behind her explodes, and everyone else in the room jumps into action.

The cadets, though passionate, forget how to aim in the heat of the moment. The medical staff, though trained, do not have phasers at the moment. This makes for a very confusing fight, even though this time they outnumber the lone Valan (who, granted, has a very high-energy weapon). Jim end up attempting to bash his head out against the edge of a biobed while trying to wrestle for the weapon. Phaser fire criss-crosses so close to him he can feel a light breeze, and though he doesn’t want to be a hypocrite, he shouts, “COULD YOU _TRY_ TO BE A LITTLE MORE ACCURATE?!”

Several stray shots from the Valan’s weapon go awry and hit Ben and three other cadets, who drop. Then he has one hand around Jim’s throat and the other jabbing his gun into Jim’s ribs-- now _he_ ’s pinned, the edge of the biobed digging uncomfortably into the small of his back. Jim’s vision flutters and wavers.

Out of nowhere, the pressure on his throat releases. He catches a glimpse of a blue-sleeved arm whacking Jim’s attacker repeatedly with some pale white object that matches the Valan’s wildly fluctuating skin before Jim’s body seizes up and electric blue jumps over his vision again.

* * *

 

Jim wakes up in what he’s quite sure is the _Valley_ ’s sickbay. “Nice to see you awake again, Captain Cadet,” says a gruff voice from above him.

Jim squints at the familiar-looking blue-sleeved arm currently running a sensor probe over his head. “Why’rnt we on the starbase?”

“‘Cause all y’all blew up my sickbay.”

Jim _hmms_ in response. A hazy memory occurs to him. “Doctor. . . you hit it with a _bone_.”

“Hm?” The whirring of the probe stops. “Oh, yeah. Who would’a thought a duraplas femur was enough to knock a Valan out? Turns out their skin’s adapted to absorb impacts with everything _but_ plastic.”

“You _hit_ a _Valan_ with a _femur_ ,” repeats Jim. He pauses. “Is the skeleton okay?”

“What, Dr. Bones? He’ll live as soon as I reattach that femur, no thanks to your friend who was leaning on him.”

A weak giggle bubbles up through Jim. The thought crosses his mind that he must have some drug in his system because he’s not feeling the pain that woke him up last time, but he brushes it away. “Dr. Bones is a good name.”

A long-suffering sigh. “One of the orderlies named it.”

Jim reaches his hand out and pats McCoy haphazardly on his forearm. “I owe you my life, Doctor Bones,” he says, giving him a lopsided grin.

McCoy raises his eyes heavenward. “God help me,” he says. “Get some rest, Jim.”

“Bo-ones!”

McCoy claps him on the shoulder, reiterates his order for Jim to rest, and wanders over to the cadet in the bed next to him.

Jim drops his hand back down and falls asleep, brain too muddled to make the connection between the day’s events and the words circling his left wrist in messy handwriting: _shut your goddamn mouth_ _._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [looks at tarsus iv references] jim why do i do this to you. 
> 
> also, i don't even know what the ending of this chapter is supposed to be, but oh well. anyway, thank you to everyone who left kudos on this thing! it's the reason i got this hulking beast of a chapter posted so soon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carol somehow influences the outcome of the universe without knowing it, the cadets take their final exams at the Academy, and Gary is (as always) a great guesser.
> 
> But there are some things even Gary Mitchell doesn't see coming.

Gary paces along the shuttlecraft station platform, so bored he considers actually going over to one of the consoles attached to the poles and reading the safety procedures (even as a child, he’d never paid attention to them and kept being berated for stepping past the neon-yellow safety line). Then he spots a familiar face in the crowd.

“Carol!” he calls. Carol looks up from her PADD and smiles in greeting. “You here waiting for Jim too?”

“Obviously.” Carol shuts off the PADD and tucks it under her arm. “It’s bad enough the _Valley_ ’s arriving a week late. Now even the shuttlecrafts aren’t on time!”

“Yeah, I sure was surprised when I went back to the Academy the day the _Tucker_ returned and Jim wasn’t already there. He _hates_ being late.”

Carol nods. “Did Starfleet say anything about the reason for the holdup?”

Gary shakes his head. “No, but I remember the captain of the _Tucker_ saying that the _Valley_ ’s a relatively old ship. Maybe they had to stop for repairs.”

They fall quiet. Carol hums to herself, folding her arms-- Gary recognizes the tune as one of Jim’s favorite songs. About twenty feet away from them, a baby begins screeching.

Gary cranes his neck to see whose kid it is and recognizes the woman bouncing her baby up and down gently. “Hey,” he says, nudging Carol. “You know who that baby’s named after?”

“What?”

“It’s Ben Finney’s kid; he named her after old Jim-boy. They’re thick as thieves, those two.”

Carol glances over at Jame Finney, who’s stopped crying and is now gurgling happily. “I haven’t met Ben yet. I always thought _you_ were Jim’s best friend. . ?”

Gary lets out a (bitter) laugh at that. “Jim’s opinion of me is probably decreased by the fact that he thinks I’m a troublemaker.”

Carol raises an eyebrow. “You are.”

Just then, the intercom beeps twice. _“Now arriving on Platform 2: shuttlecrafts 1 through 4 from NCC-1135, USS Valley .”_ Gary squints into the bright afternoon sky, and sure enough, there are four specks approaching, growing ever-larger.

“C’mon, let’s go say hi to Jim,” he says, grabbing Carol’s arm and pulling her along.

“And what about staying behind the safety line, Mr. Troublemaker?”

“I’ve been ignoring that line since I was five; trust me, it’s fine.”

The thrum of the shuttlecrafts gets louder as they dock one-by-one, before stopping abruptly.

“Now, Jim said he’d be on shuttlecraft 3--” begins Gary, and, speak of the devil, the craft’s doors open and out steps Jim, in his ever-immaculate cadet greys with a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

“What’s going on over there?” asks Carol, frowning and staring over at shuttlecraft 1. Gary looks over as well and blinks in surprise at the sight of an admiral and five captains, one of them being Gary’s captain from the _Tucker_ , striding over to the craft with somber expressions.

He shrugs and turns back to wave at the incoming swarm of cadets. “JIM!” he bellows, and Jim starts. He gives Gary a faint smile and heads over to where he and Carol are waiting.

“Hey, Carol, Gary,” he says in a quiet voice, clapping Gary half-heartedly on the shoulder. There are shadows under Jim’s eyes that weren’t there before.

Carol gives Jim a soft smile and kisses him on the cheek, but she clearly notices something’s wrong too. “Long time no see, Jim. What was the delay?”

Jim hesitates. “If the ‘Fleet hasn’t released the news to the public yet, I really shouldn’t--”

“Say, where’s your captain?” asks Gary, brow furrowed. The captain always disembarks first when returning home, _everyone_ knows that.

“We’ll talk about it in private, later.”

“Jim--”

 _“Later_ , Gary,” Jim repeats coldly.

Gary recoils, stung. “Well, do I really count as ‘the public’ to the ‘Fleet? I’m in Starfleet too, at least _I_ oughta know what--”

Something cracks in Jim’s frozen expression and he brings a hand up suddenly to cut Gary off. “Captain Mallory is _dead,_ ” he bites out, and with that, he hoists his bag’s strap further up his shoulder and stalks off.

Carol and Gary exchange a look and run after him.

 

Carol’s lost people in her life before (like her dad, who’d died the day after he’d commed the family telling them that he would be promoted to admiral upon returning home), but she’s never. . . never what? Never held _herself_ responsible for it? She'd only been fifteen, in the middle of planning a party to celebrate her father’s promotion for when he got home when her mother stumbled into her room, ashen-faced and gripping her PADD tightly, and told Carol to stop making invitations.

No, Carol hadn't blamed herself. Carol had blamed _Dad_ for ruining the party for months afterward before realizing she was really blaming him for dying. So when Gary comms her at three in the morning and tells her bluntly that he needs help with Jim, she might agree immediately, put on a jacket over her pajamas and set out on her way, but she really has no idea what she’s going to do.

She stands before the door to Gary and Jim’s room and waits several seconds before they swish open. When she steps inside, Gary, sitting on the small couch, attempts a smile and rubs his eyes. “G’morning, Carol.”

Carol glances around. Jim’s bed (oh, it’s definitely his bed, immaculately made and all) is empty. “Where’s Jim?”

Gary shrugs, and underneath the nonchalant attitude, he radiates concern. “I don’t think he’s slept since he got back. He’s had a messed-up routine the last few days, but the thing is, he’s _always_ here in the _night_. And he’s not answering my comms.”

That isn’t like Jim at all. “You’re wondering if I know where he is?”

“Well, first I was wondering if he was at _your_ place,” Gary shoots back. “But, obviously not. He’s not there, he isn’t anywhere on campus--” He cuts himself off with a frustrated sigh. “I’m worried about him, Marcus.”

“Mitchell, he’s fine.” _He has to be_. “He can’t have gone too far. . . have you tried Federation Plaza?”

Gary’s eyes widen. He leaps to his feet (and nearly trips over a stack of folders he’s left lying on the floor). “Damn it, I’m a fool! Of _course_ he’ll be there; his captain’s just died!”

“You _must_ be sleep-deprived if you’ve only just made that connection,” Carol remarks, sticking out a hand to keep Gary from falling on his face. “The Captains’ Memorial is on the Starfleet Headquarters side, right? It won’t take too long to get there.”

 

Federation Plaza is always brightly-lit, save for the Captains’ Memorial. The memorial itself is a dark wall running along the side of a rectangular fountain in front of the steps to Starfleet Headquarters, and sure enough, through the light reflecting off nearly every surface in the plaza, Jim’s silhouette is visible there.

He’s standing in front of the “M” section, arms folded, head tucked down on his chest. “Hiya, Jim,” Gary says.

“Gary. Carol.” Jim’s voice is stuck in a monotone, and it’s the total opposite of the vibrance that normally fills his every word.

Carol follows Jim’s line of sight to the name he’s staring at on the wall: _Madison Mallory SC234-83027CEC, USS Valley._ “You alright?” she asks, and winces internally at the feeble question.

“Sort of.” Jim pauses. “Just been thinking.”

Carol leans forward and presses on the name on the wall. Four notes beep out before a panel of information appears below the name, lighting up. Gary whistles, scanning it. “That’s an impressive service record.”

A shadow of a smile crosses Jim’s face. “Yeah.” He blinks, suddenly, rapidly, before glancing up at the sky. “It’s silly; she was only my captain for two months-- I don’t know why I. . .”

“Jim, what happened?” In the five days since he’s returned, Jim hasn’t breathed a word about what happened to neither Carol nor Gary. _Come on, Jim_ , thinks Carol. _We can’t help if we don’t know_.

Jim doesn’t look at either of them. “She just. . . died. Shot with someone’s phaser set to kill. I didn’t even see it-- maybe I could’ve--” He cuts himself off, jaw working. “You know, I’ve been thinking of leaving Starfleet.”

 _"You_ leaving the ‘Fleet?” Gary bursts out incredulously. “Jim, that’s like me cutting off my left arm! Starfleet’s been in your life since you were _born_. Wh-- what about exploration, and interstellar amity, and all that?”

“I still _believe_ in it, but. . . is there any point in trying to further ourselves when some of the people who contribute to progress don’t live long enough to see it?”

No one seems to know what to say in response, and so a long silence presses in on them, thick and stifling. Jim reaches out to close the panel about Captain Mallory when Carol smacks his hand down, suddenly filled with a quiet fury. “You’re right, there’s no _point_.”

Jim freezes, eyes searching Carol’s.

“She died pointlessly, didn’t she? I’d guess that her death didn’t so much as help you or get in the way of whoever was attacking you. Starfleet always says the same thing, that they ‘died bravely’ and ‘sacrificed themselves for the integrity of the Federation’, on and on and on. Her _death_ didn’t have any meaning, but that doesn’t erase what she did in her _life_ , does it?!” Carol gestures wildly at Mallory’s long list of heroics. “Her death doesn’t erase all the lives she saved, the work she’s done-- You know what, Jim? Your leaving the ‘Fleet is-- it’s stupid, that’s what!”

“Carol--”

“Don’t! Listen, your leaving Starfleet _would._  It _would_ erase everything you ever could have done in the future. And I know you, Jim Kirk!” She jabs a finger into Jim’s chest. “You hate giving up! Why would you give up before you’ve even started? There’s no _point_ in dying, no point in quitting, and if you do either of those things, so help me, God, I’ll--”

Jim is staring at her, bewilderment apparent on his face. “Carol, I wasn’t--”

“If you want to do your captain justice, then don’t erase the work she put into _you_!”

With that, Carol turns and walks away, partially because she doesn’t want to see Jim’s reaction and partially because she doesn’t want him to see the tears that are threatening to spill out onto her cheeks. She ends up, not through any conscious decision, in front of a column of names that begins with _Alexander Marcus_.

After a couple of moments (during which she attempts to regain her composure and figure out, through a lot of squinting at Jim and Gary, what effect her impromptu speech had), Gary grabs Jim by the sleeve and hauls him over to Carol. “He’s staying in the ‘Fleet,” announced Gary without any preamble. “Smart move, Jim-boy.”

Jim swats Gary away and turns to Carol, face settling into a more serious expression once again. “Thank you,” he tells Carol, and the weight behind the words makes it feel like Carol’s inadvertently done something far more impactful than she’d planned.

She beams, however, and hugs Jim. As they walk away from the Captains’ Memorial, Jim taking the lead as he always does, Gary falls into step with Carol. “That was. . . good, Marcus,” Gary says lamely. “What brought that on?”

“Well, Starfleet _is_ pointless,” Carol says cryptically, and lets herself grin at Gary’s look of consternation.

* * *

 Two months later, the Academy begins bombarding fifth-year cadets with every kind of final exam under the sun. Jim spends days studying for the Starfleet Academy Exit Exam-- Gary spends _a_ day studying-- and is flabbergasted when Gary earns a grade not too much lower than his own. “You didn’t cheat, did you?” Jim asks in an undertone as Gary all but throws his graded test at him triumphantly as they exit Professor Chandra’s class.

“Asks the cadet who cheated on the Kobayashi Maru in his fourth year.”

“Touché.” Jim flips through the pages and frowns at a diagram of a Miranda-class warp core. “Gary, when I quizzed you on reconfiguring the warp drive yesterday, you had no idea what the answer was. So if you didn’t _cheat_ , then. . ?”

“I guessed,” says Gary. “C’mon, Jim, you should know by now that I never guess wrong!”

“It _must_ be luck.”

“If you say so.” Gary checks his watch. “We’ve got General Command in an hour; wanna go get something to eat?”

 

If the _Kobiyashi Maru_ simulation was the most notorious of the Academy’s tests for cadets on the command track, the General Command simulation was the most _boring_. “What’s the point of testing our ‘day-to-day’ command style?” Gary complains as he and Jim make their way to the simulation hall. “As long as I’m a captain who doesn’t crack under pressure, I’ll be fine.”

Jim grins. “Yeah, but what if you’re so friendly with the crew that they don’t even see you as a commander anymore? What’ll you do when you order someone to fire photon torpedoes and they go, ‘I’m not really feeling it, Skipper’?”

Gary bursts into laughter. “I’ll do it myself, then. Just give me a one-man ship, I’ll show the ‘Fleet how exploring strange new worlds is really done!”

 

Gary apparently doesn't know how to explore strange new worlds.  
  
When he exits the simulation, fuming (his crew in the simulation had _mutinied_ against him), Instructor Mager gives him a knowing smile before reading off her list of comments on his command style.

“There’s a fine line between running a tight ship and breeding resentment in your crew.  Mr. Mitchell, I know you, and I know you want to be able to account for everything that could go wrong, to control everything, but sometimes you should let it go. . .trust people to do right.” She taps something on her PADD’s screen. “You’ll get your full report in three days. Next!”

Gary doesn’t leave, just sits down on a nearby bench and waits for Jim to emerge. He’s a little meanly glad when he sees that others have done worse than him-- Jamison accidentally caused a warp core breach on an Engineering inspection and _blew up_ his entire crew-- but he still can’t stop thinking about what Instructor Mager said. He’d make a good captain. . . probably. Maybe? No. Who cared about a captaincy, anyway? He could do better than that. He could--

He’s startled out of his thoughts when Jim appears. “Kirk, you did well,” says Mager grudgingly. “However, you put a little too much store in implicitly trusting the crew to follow your orders. You can’t--”

“Ma’am, I only plan on captaining the best crew we have.”

“It’s a good philosophy, Kirk, but the fact of the matter is that no one is as pure at heart as you’d want them to be.”

“Ma’am, I really think that--”

Mager’s expression softens minutely. “I know, it’s a hard lesson to swallow. You have to accept it; even among the most loyal crewmates, there are going to be cowards, deserters, mutineers-- Mr. Mitchell! What are you still doing here?”

Gary nearly jumps off the bench at the sound of his name. “Waiting for Mr. Kirk, ma’am,” he says, mentally adding _Please don’t accuse me of eavesdropping._

Mager levels a critical gaze at him. “You know, you and Kirk would benefit from serving on the same ship; perhaps your command styles would rub off on each other.”

Jim laughs. Gary doesn’t.

 

A week before they graduate and are told which ships they’ll be serving on, Jim and Gary are walking to a nearby sandwich place (it’s taken five years, but Gary is finally, _finally_ fed up with the Academy’s food) when Jim stops short in front of a jewelry store.

“What kind of jewelry do you think Carol would like?” Jim asks, eyes fixed on the glittering display.

Gary shrugs. “I dunno. C’mon, if we’re late, the place is going to be packed and we won’t be able to eat a thing.”

“You go on,” Jim murmurs, and, not waiting for an answer, steps into the store.

Gary's halfway down the block when it hits him: Jim had been looking at wedding rings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow originally this chapter was supposed to go an entirely different direction but halfway through i went "wait jim's captain just died i feel like perhaps i should mention this???"
> 
> i'm having so much fun writing this and it's all down to you wonderful people reading it! i'd make finger guns at you, but sadly you can't see them


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lives change. It feels like it's all going too fast for Carol, though.

The volume of the sea of people before the graduating cadets rises and falls based on the number of family members per person in the crowd, but Jim’s small family seems to have a penchant for defying expectations. When “Ensign Kirk, James Tiberius!” is called out, Jim’s parents and brother jump to their feet and start cheering, managing to reach a decibel level comparable to that of a ten-person family. 

“THAT’S MY BROTHER!” bellows Sam Kirk, clapping his hands in a frenzy. Gary notes that he looks exactly like how he’d imagine Jim with a mustache. It’s mildly disturbing. “NOW HE DOESN’T HAVE TO HIDE IN CARDBOARD BOXES AND PRETEND THEY’RE STARSHIPS ANYMORE!”

“Damn it, Sam,” Jim mutters under his breath as he takes his diploma and starship assignment. His ears are turning bright pink, but he grins back at his family and waves at Carol, who’s sitting next to them.

 

After the ceremony is over (Gary only got to sit down after his name was called, and since he had to wait halfway through the alphabet. . . well, suffice to say that he’d probably fight someone for a free chair), little groups of former cadets form, their families clustering around them as well. Excited snippets of conversation float over to Gary’s ears. 

“--We’re assigned to the same ship! Maybe--”

“--What do you  _ mean _ you signed up for a boring old science vessel?!--”

“--Stop complaining, you know the ‘Fleet never assigns people fresh out of the Academy to exploratory vessels--”

The last comment, Gary realizes, was made to Jim, who’s giving his starship assignment a disapproving look. “I was  _ hoping _ \--” begins Jim, and Sam Kirk punches his arm.

“You’ll still be exploring new planets, only within Federation space. There’s plenty of discoveries to make; the UFP hasn’t even got  _ half _ its territory charted!”

“Fine,” says Jim. “Also, ow.”

Sam punches his arm again. “Quit with the whining, you know I have the arm strength of a noodle.”

“Ow,” repeats Jim, though he’s fighting down a grin.

“Jim, where’re you assigned?” Ben Finney appears out of nowhere from the crush of people, trying to balance his daughter in one hand and his (now crumpled) diploma in the other.

“ _ Farragut _ ; you?”

“Damn, I’m on the  _ Republic _ . Mitchell?”

Gary looks down at his assignment. “ _ Alexandria _ .”

There’s a pause. “We could still bump into each other again. Our ships may work together--”

Finney cuts Jim off. “Sure, they might. Hey, I won’t miss either of you, just so you know. . .”

“ _ That _ was uncalled-for,” says Gary.

“. . . Because you’re both a pair of troublemakers who might drag my career down. I mean, who cheats on the  _ Maru _ ?”

Jim laughs, then sobers at once. “Don’t say that around Sam, I still haven’t told him.” 

Sam, who’s chatting animatedly with Carol off to the side, perks up at the mention of his name. “Don’t say what around me?”

“Your brother cheated on the  _ Kobayashi Maru _ and was almost booted out of the Academy, that’s what,” says Gary automatically. Jim kicks him in the leg.

A gleeful gleam appears in Sam’s eyes. Gary thanks every known deity that he doesn’t have a sibling. “You  _ cheated _ on the--”

Carol interrupts, a hand to her comm unit, much to Jim’s obvious relief. “Ah, I’m sorry, Jim, I’ve really got to go. I got a call, one of my lab technicians needs help wrangling an experiment.”

“Aw, to think, last year  _ you  _ were a lab technician. You’ve come far, too, Marcus.”

“Shut up, Mitchell. Anyway, I can’t stay much longer, but congratulations again, Jim! Oh, uh--” Carol darts over to the seat she’d been sitting in and rummages for something. 

When she turns around, she’s holding a bouquet of flowers. “Here, take these,” she says, and thrusts the bouquet towards Jim as her comm unit pings again. “Yes! No! Davies, don’t put them in the incinerator; I’ll be right there!-- Jim, I need to go-- No, no, get me Dr. Njenga! Cass, what’s going on--”

“Carol, wait,” Jim begins futilely as Carol starts to elbow her way out of the crowd. “Carol! It’ll only take a minute, I promise!”

Carol hesitates. “I’ll be right there, Cass,” she says, and brings a hand to her ear to mute her comm unit. “Something wrong?”

“Only thing wrong is that I didn’t realize I’d be this pressed for time.” Jim flashes her the patented James T. Kirk Charming Grin, hands off the bouquet to Ben (who gives it to little Jame), and begins fumbling through his pockets. “You know, I had a whole speech planned out. . . I, ah--” The Grin is starting to turn a little watery. 

“Pressed for time?” repeats Gary loudly. 

Jim’s ears turn pink again. “Yes! Yes, okay. Carol, I’ve only known you for a year, but in that time, I--”

Gary groans. “Jim! Enough with the long-winded speeches! Marcus, he’s proposing to you!”

Carol’s jaw drops open as Jim belatedly produces a ring and drops to one knee. “Carol Marcus, will you marry me?”

The silence stretches on for three, four, five seconds before Carol says yes and pulls Jim back to his feet to kiss him. 

Ben tosses his shredded starship assignment into the air (Gary almost questions that before remembering a digital copy’s been sent to their PADDs) and shouts, “Attaboy, Jim!” Sam Kirk just stands back, smirking, until Carol and Jim break apart and he can clap Jim on the shoulder. 

Trying to swipe pieces of makeshift confetti away from his face, Gary claps too. The soulmark on his ankle itches, but that might just be his imagination.

* * *

 

“Cass, sorry I’m late, but--”

“So when’s the wedding?”

Carol stops short in the middle of brushing stray flower petals off her clothes from that bouquet she gave Jim almost twenty minutes ago.  _ Only twenty minutes ago? All that happened in twenty minutes?! _ “How’d you. . ? Oh,” she says upon noticing Cassandra’s pointed look at Carol’s ring finger. “Um. Not anytime soon?” Her chuckle feels forced. 

Cassandra continues giving her that pointed look. 

“Look, you know how it is; at the end of the week  _ all _ the new Starfleet graduates will be leaving to serve on their starships. God knows when Jim’s going to have shore leave, so there isn’t much point planning the wedding this early!”

“He’s barely out of cadet-hood, so it’s not like he’ll be going  _ far _ . Those ships return every few months to rendezvous with the ‘Fleet, and I’ll bet a hundred credits that so long as his rank is anything below lieutenant-commander he’ll be released for leave.” Cassandra hefts the durasteel welder in her arms. “Now help me with this, I think it weighs more than the average shuttlecraft.”

Carol takes one end of the welder and staggers under its weight. “What do I do?” she asks.

“Help me carry it over-- ah. You don’t mean ‘what do I do with this’, you mean ‘what do I do about my new fiancé having to leave me for weeks on end’.”

“Yes! No! I. . . don’t know.”

“Well, we’ve got plenty of  _ this  _ to do.” Cassandra jerks her chin towards the tables bearing the weight of twelve dermal regenerators’ worth of electronics. “Y’know. Science. Your life’s work.”

“Yes, but what do I  _ do? _ ” Carol repeats, dropping one end of the welder onto the nearest flat surface. “It’s just--not just about this! I’ve been thinking, I’ve barely done  _ anything _ with my life! People my age already have a Ph.D; have you heard of Elizabeth Dehner?! What am I doing with my life--  _ am I  _ wasting _ it on this? _ ”

Cassandra gives Carol a look. “Are you happy?” She pops a compartment open in the welder and peers at it critically.

“. . . Yes. I mean, this is one of the best ideas I’ve had my entire life.” Carol gestures vaguely towards the entirety of the lab. “It’s just  _ going so slow _ , you know? Jim leaving the Academy made me think, he’s accomplished so much in this time, and I feel like I’ve gone nowhere. My life, it’s changing, but I’ve done nothing.”

“Did you just  forget about the dermal regenerator? Also, I wouldn’t call trying to get life from lifelessness  _ nothing _ .”

Carol snorts, then hums thoughtfully. “‘Life from lifelessness’. That’s good, I should use that if I ever get far enough to make an official proposal to Starfleet.”

“You’d better credit me. Hey, who’re you planning on making your maid of honor?”

The abrupt switch back to their original topic almost throws Carol off. “You, of course,” she says, and Cassandra beams proudly. 

"Why today, of all days to propose? Jim could've picked something more romantic, right?"

Carol giggles. " _Sure_ , he's romantic. You should've seen Jim. He was in such a rush, he almost tripped over his feet trying to get down on one knee before I left. He explained, though. Why he wanted to propose right after the graduation ceremony. He wanted the two happiest moments of his life to be right next to each other."

"I get why you saying yes is one moment, but what's the other? Leaving the Academy?"

"Getting his starship assignment."

Cassandra rolls her eyes. "Work right next to love. Does he ever take a break?"

Work right next to love. _Jim's not the only one in this relationship who does that_ _,_ says a little voice in Carol's head. Carol tells it in earnest to shut up and clears her throat.  “You never know. Anyway, what happened to the sample Davies was having trouble with when he commed me?”

“It died. Vijay cried a little.”

“Damn.” Carol thinks about Jim briefly, what he would say if he heard her worries, then shakes her head. She rolls up her sleeves. “Better get back to work, then.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this isn't one of my better (or longer) chapters, sorry, but i just wanted to get something out so the gap between updates wasn't too long. updates may be more infrequent now; school's started, after all, so thank you for your patience and for sticking with this thing!


End file.
